Maine’s three refugee resettlement agencies have been approved to resettle double the amount of refugees in fiscal year 2024 (FY24) than they did in FY23, according to a Friday report from Maine Public.
Refugees are a separate population from the state’s asylum seekers, who are in the U.S. awaiting adjudication on their asylum application — whereas refugees are brought to the U.S. via the federal Refugee Admissions Program and must undergo screening before entering the country.
Unlike asylum seekers, refugees are allowed to work immediately upon arrival in the U.S., and can usually apply for citizenship within five years of their arrival.
President Joe Biden increased the total admissions ceilings for refugees in both FY22 and FY23 to 125,000, the highest target number in decades.
In FY23, 419 refugees were resettled in Maine, according to Maine Public — a number which the state’s resettlement agencies said will increase to 840 in FY24.
The three agencies approved to resettle refugees in Maine are Catholic Charities Maine, Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.
The director of migration at Catholic Charities Maine, Charles Mugabe, told Maine Public that the resettlement increase is part of a federal-level push, and that Catholic Charities expects to resettle 500 refugees in FY24.
“So during Fiscal Year 24, the federal government has requested all resettlement agencies to double most of the numbers that they are resettling,” Mugabe said.
Rilwan Osman, executive director of Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services in Lewiston, said they have been approved to resettle 200 refugees this year, double the 100 they resettled last year.
Osman told the taxpayer-funded news outlet that housing “has been one of our major, major, challenges that we have faced,” and that they have doubled their resettlement staff and are trying to build relationships with landlords beyond the Lewiston-Auburn area.
Osman’s organization expects to see new families arriving in Maine as soon as next week from Syria and Cambodia.
Siobhan Whalen, resettlement program director at the Jewish Community Alliance (JCA) of Southern Maine told Maine Public that her organization is looking to resettle families in smaller cities such as Waterville.
“I feel hopeful about these less traditional areas for resettlement being a space where our families can feel safe and welcome,” Whalen said.
She said the JCA is going to take in 28 refugees this month, including families from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Afghanistan, and Colombia.
Additionally, the governor wants to import another 75,000 “migrants” over the next five years. And I thought we had a “housing crisis” here . Silly me.
“Osman’s organization expects to see new families arriving in Maine as soon as next week from Syria and Cambodia”
…lol, just in time for a good ole Maine winter! 😂
It would be easier to accommodate genuine refugees if our homeland wasn’t already occupied by 30 million illegal aliens !
This isnt a joke, it’s an invasion of our country . These “refugee’s will be able to take jobs from Maine people. This will destroy our culture , our towns and small maine city’s. Look at what they are turning Portland into… it’s happening all over the country . And WE are paying for it. WAKE UP.
Utter cultural insanity! But, what else would we expect from Leftists who hate our country? Not mentioned is the amount of taxpayer money these resettlement agencies are being paid per head for their “altruistic” services which is in the neighborhood of $2,200. per person.
Highly recommended monograph: “The Red-Green Axis” by Jim Simpson
They were “approved” to settle all these refugees. By who? Did the people of Maine approve this? You had over a thousand “asylum seekers” show up this year from Congo. Who paid for that trip? Maybe we can find out and do something about it.
The Democrats bang on the climate change hoax.Well how about the reality of Cultural Change. It’s coming to every community as we are being transformed into a world of Chaos as our communities are slowly being altered in so many ways. Think of this, we’re told we need labor but then the migrants are not allowed to work. Most are uneducated without skills. They live on our dime as we go a trillion more into national debt every quarter. Not only that, they demand more and better services as many of our own are ignored. We are slowly being destroyed from within by our current radical leftist leaders. We may reach the point of no return by the time our 2024 midterms come around or even if we still have elections at that time. Hopefully we can change course but only if people actually vote the ones who are allowing these society destroying policies out of office. Replacing the bureaucrats that implement these policies is critical. Hopefully there is still time!
Voting or not Voting has Serious Consequences.
WE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS AND WILL NOT TOLERATE IT
The three agencies approved to resettle refugees in Maine are Catholic Charities Maine, Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine. Enemies of humanity
Wake up Mainers, you’re losing your state…your homeland. Time to take action.
I was researching some context on another matter when I noticed this news post regarding supposed “refugees” claiming asylum status; by peoples from south of the US border and beyond entering Texas and other southmost States illegally. I happen to live in Texas – born and raised in Houston Texas. Houston proper, within the Houston city limit, is approaching 5 million inhabitants. Of those inside the Houston city limit, 59% are Hispanic, and growing rapidly. All of the general radio stations have transitioned to predominantly “Latino” genres of music. Half of the customer service personnel in Houston speak Spanish, 30% of them cannot speak English, job opportunities are now requiring bilingual speakers, elementary schools are full of Spanish speaking children who cannot speak English and do not read or write proper Spanish. Just three months ago, Hispanics celebrated the fact that they became a majority in Texas. Whites now hold second place in the populace. These “Refugees” predominantly report they are coming to the US seeking jobs, and rarely reference threat of violence and crime as a primary reason to endure the trek into the US, though they clearly abuse asylum status, are in fact being coached by cartel (and likely their legal counsel) of what to say regarding claims of asylum status, how to fill out forms for asylum status and how to maneuver through interviews with US security and border control. Though you will find Hispanic officials, and Hispanic lawmakers and politicians and even American citizens of Hispanic ancestry down here in Texas who will denounce the uncontrolled and unmitigated inflow of Migrants into the US, most Hispanics have a familial tie and natural favor of their Hispanic peers – always noted as “my people”. Most Hispanics a silently complicate because they cant see beyond their superficial connection to skin color and Hispanic language. They do not understand that it is their own people who have sown, condoned, supported, fomented and reaped the problems that exist in the regions and nations they fled, due to cultural norms, practices and what seems to be group inadequacy of solving their own issue back home. By moving to a new location (territory or nation) will not change behavior and mindset. The mass migration of these peoples will only guarantee that the same problems will remain in the culture of the herd, rather than the herd adapting to a new culture and standard practice, which will enable them to crawl out of the malaise of an impoverished mindset. Certainly we can expect maybe 10% achieve real life improvement and a change of their personal history as they truly use the opportunity in the US to rise up to a new standard, but the other 90% will not, and of that 90%, more than 1/3 will require some form of food, medical, housing stipend (welfare) to maintain existence in the US. Likely 8-10% of the 1/3 will end up in a gang or in jail, as Latino gang numbers are growing exponentially in the south. Cartels are crossing the US border and have outposts in several location in the South West US. Within 20 years the US will look like Mexico in all of its finest qualities as the US receives the poorest of the poor from the south of the US border and the lowest skilled and least educated at that. It is funny how most Mexicans and their Central American counterpart do just fine and remain in Mexico, while Mexico off-loads its poor into the US so that Mexico doesn’t have to foot the bill of social security for its own people. Immigrant remittances of some $25 billion USD is sent back to Mexico each year, which stimulates Mexico’s economy. But, to the contrary, you will only hear two things from the mouths of prominent Hispanic leaders about their own people: A) Hispanics have been cheated, are owed something, are entitled, are just trying to dream and have a good life, B) Hispanics are a brave, accomplished, pleasant and cohesive group of people. If B was true then they would have been B back in Mexico. Anyhow I could go on for miles. Cultural convergence is being forced upon America (and upon Europe, UK, Australia too for that matter), where those on the top will be ruined by the ideological enforcement of identity politics to the detriment of people of European descent. Cultural convergence: digression to the mean.
So why isn’t the three agencies paying for this. Not the Maine tax payers